Eureka: an exercise of inconvenience
by Caladria101
Summary: He liked denial.  Denial gave him a good few solid hours of sleep before he was due to take his watch.  Denial let him ignore the headache that had been coming on for the past three days. [team]


There was an excited voice coming from the next tent over, punctuated by a deeper, more measured sound that had to be Teal'c. The soft sound of silent mocking that was much closer to home would be his current tent-mate – Carter liked to mock in an appropriate and within-regulation way.

Jack refused to stop shaking his head in denial. He _liked_ denial. Denial gave him a good few solid hours of sleep before he was due to take his watch. Denial let him ignore the headache that had been coming on for the past three days after listening to Daniel negotiate a way to explore the ruins with the natives. They were a very polite race, with no sense of humour. They set his teeth on edge.

"He's going to come in here jabbering away about something that I don't care about and then he's going to expect me to _care_," he protested (not 'whined'; he definitely wasn't whining).

Carter continued to silently mock.

"If he comes in here, tell him I'm… tell him I'm asleep. Tell him I'm _dead_."

"If you keep talking, Sir, he might figure out I'm lying," she pointed out in a reasonable tone of voice. Oh great – now he was being mocked out loud.

Daniel seemed to be talking faster with less stops – either Teal'c couldn't get a word in edgeways anymore or he'd given up and was kel'nor'eeming safe in the knowledge that Daniel probably wasn't about to be derailed by such a minor object as a lack of audience.

Suddenly the talking stopped. "Oh, for…" Jack began. "I'm _asleep_," he reminded Carter. "Dead to the world, out for the count."

He lay back down, facing the woman who was eyeing him speculatively. He glared back, mouthing; _Five… four… three… two… one…_

Nothing happened.

Jack frowned, easing himself into a sitting position again just as the tent flap unzipped and Daniel stuck his head in.

"Jack! Oh, good, you're awake."

"_Oy_," he said, with feeling.

He watched as Daniel eased himself into the tent, making himself comfortable in between feet and supplies.

"I've been thinking about those writing on the ruins – "

"Of _course_ you have."

Daniel gave Jack a look that suggested he was being unreasonably childish. Jack disagreed. He felt, under the circumstances that he wasn't being unreasonably childish at all.

"Anyway, _Sam_, I was wondering if these translations made any sense to you?" Daniel asked, offering his notebook – oh, they were in for a long night if the notebook had come out. Jack sneaked a peek as it passed between the two, wondering how Carter could even _read_ the scrawl that passed for handwriting in Daniel-land, let alone make sense of it. The man wrote how he spoke – very fast and incomprehensibly.

Apparently Carter could, though – she gave a little "ooh!" of excitement and pulled out a pencil, making notes of her own.

Daniel peered over her shoulder. "Oh, you mean that's – "

"Yeah! So then that would be – "

"But if you –"

"I guess that's – "

"I knew it! There's no way that could have been – "

"Absolutely not!"

They paused for a second, grinning at each other with eggheaddish pride before diving back into the land of sentences which did not finish. Jack gave up trying to sleep where he was and, taking his bedroll with him, went in search of Teal'c, another tent, and silence. He was fairly sure that Daniel and Carter didn't even notice him leave.

Pushing past Teal'c – who was sat in the opening to the other tent now that no one was in it – he dropped his bedroll on top of Daniel's and lay down.

"Major Carter was able to aid Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said, more as a statement than a question.

"They've got their head together cooking up the answer to life, the universe and everything," Jack said dismissively.

"Forty two."

Jack frowned. "What?" he asked, before waving away an answer, and focusing on the more immediate problem. "You reckon they'll stay up all night with their science slumber party?"

Teal'c looked at him as if he were stupid.

Jack sighed. "Of _course_ they will. Wake me up for the next watch?" he asked rhetorically. " Hammond'll have my ass if I bring the kids back sleepy."

"Indeed."

"Thanks for the support, T."

He lay back, trying to block out the excited rise and fall of Carter and Daniel's conversation and the sound of trees in the alien breeze. They'd pitched up in a clearing, but every rustle of every leaf still reached his ears.

Slowly the sound of the conversation disappeared from his notice.

Hang on – that wasn't that it had disappeared from his notice – it'd just disappeared.

Holy crap, they were coming after him.

"O'Neill," Teal'c warned.

"I know, I know," he groused, trying to hide under a pack.

"Sir," Carter said reproachfully as she crawled into the tent, Daniel following her in a wave of destruction that somehow managed to move every single object in his path, Jack's feet included.

"Ow," Jack protested, moving said feet out of the path of danger.

"We've got an idea," she began, eyes bright and sparkling with enthusiasm and overly awake, to Jack's thinking.

Daniel thrust a notebook under his nose and started jabbering away about something or other.

Jack stuck it out for a minute or two, occasionally giving Teal'c a look that suggested that a pack of Jaffa coming out of the trees and attacking them would be more welcome than they'd ever been in his life. Teal'c, unfortunately, was keeping watch and had his back to Jack, but it made him feel better. Finally he stuck his head back on the pack with a warning finger and a growled "_In the morning_," that he tried to make sound as ferocious as possible.

Carter and Daniel gave him a look that suggested he'd just not only kicked their puppy, but run it over as well. He tried to think up ways that he could pull her up on insubordination charges, but even ordering her to shut up wouldn't stop Daniel, and he wouldn't put it past her to interpret "Shut the hell up" as "and that includes opening your mouth to stop Daniel talking."

Daniel opened his mouth again. "Jack, I don't think you're understanding the significance of what we're trying to tell you – "

"No, _Daniel_, and I'm not going to until a decent hour. Is there any reason to not wait until morning?"

"Well, it's _fascinating_. And incredibly significant. If you'd just let me tell you what –"

Jack missed the significance of the whole thing because he'd stuck his hands over his ears and started singing quietly to himself.

_"On top of Old Smo-key…" _

"…became a cultural taboo to…"

_"All covered with snow…" _

"…and the ritual sealing up of…"

_"la la la laa laa…" _

"So of course they'd never seen, and even if they did…"

_"la la la la slow…" _

"…so if we use to the C4, we should be able to get at it."

His hands were dragged away by one pissed off looking Carter. He hoped she remembered that assaulting a superior officer with his own boots was technically illegal and therefore something she'd never do, because she looked like she'd have no problems with it otherwise.

"I don't know what was worse," Daniel said. "That you didn't listen, or that we had to listen to you singing."

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it _that_, Daniel." His gestures would be far more impressive if Carter let go, but the woman had a death grip.

"Nor would we, O'Neill."

Jack glared at Teal'c back, which was doing a good job of looking innocent, before his mind rewound the conversation a few seconds. He stared at Daniel incredulously.

"You want to use C4? Blow something up? Blow up a priceless rock?"

"If we want to get into that temple at all, Jack, then yes. The local people sealed off the only entrance and the only way to get through that without destroying the original temple is going to be a controlled explosion through what the local people have done to it. That was what these past three days were about."

Daniel gave Jack a look that suggested that Jack should have paid more attention to what was going on – Jack thought this was wild optimism, but that was Daniel for you.

"Fine!"

"Good!" Daniel said, his eyebrows shooting up like they always did when Daniel got surprised. "Right! Well, I'll let you...umm… You're definitely going to let me use the C4 to get into a room of what is sure to keep me interested for another few days?"

Ah. So that was it. Catch Jack when he wanted to sleep and he'd agree to anything.

"Yes. Go. Sleep. Shoo." Never let it be said that Daniel's plan's never worked. "Carter, you're going to need to let go."

"Sorry, Sir."

"No, you're not."

She didn't answer that – her and Daniel pushing past Teal'c and leaving, like kids that had realised that funtime was over and bedtime was here.

Jack watched them go, then lay back with an expansive sigh. "T?"

"They are not returning, O'Neill."

"If they come back, shoot them."

"I will not, O'Neill."

"Does no-one listen to me?"

"Rarely."

Jack did a double take, blinked a few times and then decided to drop it. His ears had given him craziness again, because there was no way…

Nah. No way. He'd just get some sleep and realise this was a bad dream, or something. Daniel blowing stuff up, Teal'c being snippy and Carter being, well, Carter. All of it. SG-1 would be not-nuts by tomorrow.


End file.
